Longing.
Posted by robdalajara on August 4, 2011
I miss Dad. I’ve had that thought thousands of times, and it seems that each time carries with it a different set of connotations.
While he was still with us, but hobbled by Alzheimer’s, that sentiment was accompanied by feelings of hope that somehow, he’d come back to us. Somehow, he would be there to, at the least, watch me get my high school diploma. When he went on from this life, I was 4 years removed from graduation, so obviously my selfish desires were not fulfilled.
When I was letting my life degrade with alarming regularity in my early twenties, I yearned for him to be around to knock some sense into me. I needed some sort of model on how to do life, how to be a man, but the only one that I cared to learn that stuff from wasn’t there. Certainly, other examples existed, but not the one I wanted. I missed him, and just didn’t care about much of anything else.
After I got things back together, and I was doing fairly well, I had an encounter that changed my life. God happened, as it were. I was living in Indianapolis at the time, and immediately made a lot of phone calls and then drove to Royal Center and visiting Dad’s grave to, y’know, tell him. I like to think it was more than symbolic, but hey, who knows? I wanted him to know. He believed in God, and I just, well, am a sappy fool sometimes.
I’ve thought about him a lot this past year, what with trying to be a father myself, then actually being a father. All the implications that has. I’m not really big on asking a lot of questions, but I’d at least like to have the luxury of being able to ask Dad a few things. Part of me wishes he were still here so I wouldn’t have Early-Onset Alzheimer’s looming over me, leaving me wondering whether or not I am under its shadow.
Every now and then, when I miss Dad, I still mourn a little. Not so much for me, but for the people in my life who never had the chance to meet him. My wife, Amy, has only seen pictures. My daughter, Sarah, will only have pictures, and the few stories I can manage to dredge up. I resemble him; I think the main reason I don’t mind my bald spot is because, hey, it’s a little bit of him. I miss him, but instead of being overcome with depression and woe-is-me, I’m…a lighter shade of melancholy, I suppose. I smile when I think of him. I still get sad, but it comes laced with a longing, instead of with despair.
